April 27, 2016

Naked amidst the mud pots

“I’m your top model,” Maine Writer said to me. We were standing on the balcony of our hotel, and she was naked, of course. Conference roommates have to pose naked for my project: it’s a tradition. Maine Writer looked strong as she leaned against the balcony, ready to take on the world. I hated to burst her bubble, but it had to be done.

“They’re hometown friends. We go on retreat every year,” I explained. “They’ve each posed for me seven times.”
Actually, I was being kind. What I didn’t tell her is that Quilt Artist and Dancing Woman both posed in an eighth shot, a group picture that I called “Them Naked Women.” That was back in my days of innocence, before I realized that how I labelled photos on Flickr mattered. I’ve since discovered that all kinds of folks go searching the internet for naked women, often without the best intentions. Who knew? But it was a good learning experience. I learned how to block people on Flickr.

I had underestimated how competitive Maine Writer is. She pulled a dress over her naked body, not even bothering with the panties or bra she’d flung aside. “Come on,” she said, pulling on a pair of boots. “This photo shoot isn’t over.”

Luckily, we had rented a car. We spent the day driving along an earthquake fault. Whenever I saw a scene that I loved, we’d stop the car, and Maine Writer would strip off her dress. Like the hay bales we saw, for instance. It seemed incredible that anyone would be growing hay in the desert. So of course, we took a photo, with Maine Writer dashing behind the stack of a hay when we noticed how slowly the cars were going by.

We stopped a park to take a hike and noticed a bench conveniently placed on the trail, just in case anyone might want to pose for a naked picture without getting their butt dirty.

By then Maine Writer was fully into the spirit of the project. She kept pointing out spots. “See that green water? The only color in this landscape.” She yanked off her dress and scrambled down the embankment, clouds of dust rising as she went.

The scenery was pretty fantastic. We climbed up a huge pile of dirt that Maine Writer said was a mud pot, formed from boiling water pushing mud up. At the top we looked down into a vast inland salt lake.

By the time we got back into the car, my face was red from the heat. I took a cloth from my camera bag, soaked it with water, and draped it on my head. I knew it looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. Besides, we hadn’t seen anyone in hours.

By the Maine Writer was obsessed with finding weird geological features. She was following some kind of obscure road map, which she held in her lap as she drove. “It says there’s a field of mud pots,” she said excitedly.

We pulled off to the side of the road. I looked across at the mud puts. They seemed pretty unremarkable. They were, literally, just piles of mud. They weren’t even very tall. Where I come from, snowplows make piles of snow that are higher.
But Maine Writer jumped from the car and went striding ahead, so I followed. The late afternoon light would be great for a photo, I thought.

As we approached the piles of mud, I started hearing sounds. First a bubbling noise, like the sound spaghetti sauce makes as it begins splattering all over the stove. Then hissing like a tea kettle. And a weird glumph like a small monster or sock puppet. I saw puddles crusted with salt, bubbles breaking through. These were active mud pots.

As I knelt on the ground to take a close-up photo, the mud was warm beneath my knees. “This would be a bad time for this crust of earth to collapse,” I thought to myself. I pictured myself falling into a pit of boiling mud. I’ve had nightmares like that. I moved away hurriedly, but it didn’t stop me from asking Maine Writer to pose on the edge. If you’re going to be my number one model, I explained, you have to be prepared to take some risk.

We survived the mud pots. And it was almost time for us to drive back into civilization. Maine Writer had already scoped out a Mexican restaurant for dinner, our last meal together before flying home to our respective homes. But we did make one last stop. Maine Writer wanted to take her photo at the very end of the fault line. And so we did.

Yay! NOW can I be the top model? (And DJan and Far Side of Fifty, I can assure you these -- and the 500 other photos Jo(e) took were all on the same day with the same hair style -- I have a the world's weirdest tan line to prove it).